Fire and Fury: unsurprisingly unhelpful

Joshua Loo, and Benedict Randall Shaw

№1, Volume V

Michael Wolff

Fire and Fury

973.933 WOL—John Sargeaunt Room

ISBN 978-1408711408 / 1408711400

With the benefit of hindsight, it is relatively trivial to see that the book has had little political effect. The fundamentals—that Trump is the most unorthodox President in recent history¹, that there is not very much respect for propriety in the White House², that liberals are largely opposed to him³, that his base support him come what may, no matter the allegations against him⁴, and that, for now, Congressional Republicans (and, indeed, Democrats) are not inclined to remove him⁵—remain the same. Fire and Fury does not change any of these fundamentals, for it could not have. None of its allegations could have alienated a political base who have supported him even after the Access Hollywood scandal (hence his election); liberals have not suddenly found themselves even more opposed to Trump than they already are, because it is not particularly possible.

Evaluated by the scale of the political change it has wrought, therefore, Fire and Fury was a flop; this was to be expected. It was something less of a flop due to the publicity which occurred as a result of an attempt to halt the release of the book⁶. As a book, however, Fire and Fury has been remarkably successful, selling over a million copies in seven weeks.⁷

There are some difficulties in reviewing a book of this sort. Many of the claims cannot immediately be verified. It is by their very nature, having been obtained by a method whose purpose is to reveal more than can be revealed ordinarily outside, that they cannot. Hence, to some extent, an evaluation of factual accuracy is neither easy nor useful; it is likely to be politically coloured—in the subjectivity of the instinct to which we must fall back, political considerations will almost certainly find their place, and, even should they not truly do so, the perception of political motivation will still affect the degree to which different political groups can discuss such revelations.

Nevertheless, at some points, Fire and Fury’s account of events can be compared with other accounts, which may be in the public domain. Its account of Trump’s speech at the Central Intelligence Agency’s headquarters after his inauguration is instructive in several ways. The chapter is illustrative of some of the qualities of the book as a whole.

It is worth reminding oneself of the brazenness of the United States intelligence community. In 1953, the Central Intelligence Agency implemented a plan to overthrow the then-Prime Minister’s government with a ‘pro-Western’ replacement.⁸ In 1954, the United States supported a coup in Guatemala against a ‘former colonel whose policies attempted to narrow the chasm between the country’s tiny elite and its impoverished peasants.’⁹ In Congo, in 1960, the Central Intelligence Agency attempted to ‘remove Lumamba …through assassination’;¹⁰ Lumamba was the first President of the newly independent Republic of the Congo, but was removed soon after in a Belgian-backed coup d’état. In 1963, the Central Intelligence Agency supported a coup against the Diem régime.¹¹ In 1963, the Central Intelligence Agency supported a Brazilian military coup; democracy was only restored in 1985.¹² In Chile, the Central Intelligence Agency admits that it ‘was aware of coup-plotting by the military …and—because the CIA did not discourage the takeover and had sought to instigate a coup in 1970—probably appeared to condone it.’¹³

In the ‘war on terror’, the intelligence community have also acted questionably. Optically, the National Security Agency’s removal of ‘honesty’ and ‘openness’ from its list of core values¹⁴ was perhaps not thought through particularly well, but this change is perhaps the least of Americans’ worries. In a programme involving more than 54 countries, the Central Intelligence Agency coördinated a programme of ‘extraordinary rendition’, involving the detention of more than 100 detainees in areas where it was thought that constitutional protections against torture which apply in the United States could be ignored; secrecy continues to shroud the programme, and so the true number of detainees is unknown.¹⁵

A National Security Agency programme ‘violated the Constitution’, and was ‘part of a pattern of misrepresentation by agency officials in submissions to the secret court’, according to a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court ruling in 2011—the violation was due to the interception of domestic (United States-United States) emails and other communications.¹⁶ An Electronic Frontier Foundation analysis of publicly released Federal Bureau of Investigation documents indicates that ‘from 2001 to 2008, the FBI reported to the IOB [Intelligence Oversight Board] approximately 800 violations of laws, Executive Orders, or other regulations governing intelligence investigations …both FBI and IOB oversight of intelligence activities was delayed and likely ineffectual; on average, 2.5 years elapsed between a violation’s occurence and its eventual reporting to the IOB.’¹⁷

The report of the Church Committee notes that COINTELPRO—a Federal Bureau of Investigation counterintelligence programme—included the ‘[a]nonymous attacking [of] the political beliefs of targets in order to induced their employers to fire them; [a]nonymously mailing letters to the spouses of intelligence targets for the purpose of destroying their marriages; [and] [o]btaining from IRS the tax returns of a target and then attempting to provoke an IRS investigation for the express purpose of deterring a protest leader from attending the Democratic National Convention’; it further notes that ‘[f]or approximately 20 years the CIA carried out a program of indiscriminately opening citizens’ first class mail.’¹⁸

What does Fire and Fury say of the event? The impression is given that the speech exclusively consisted of Trumpian bombast—about his own experience. Nearly all of the account consisted of a verbatim quotes of his bombast. These words did indeed leave his mouth. Wolff says that ‘witnesses would describe his reception at the CIA as either a Beatles-like emotional outpouring or a response so confounded and appalled that, in the seconds after he finished, you could hear a pin drop’—he is clearly directing us towards the second—we are brought there by the ridiculous quality of his earlier remarks.

Trump also made many other remarks, after some of which CIA staffers clapped. Both a transcript¹⁹ and a video²⁰ of the speech are available. Note some of the remarks which induced clapping.

• ‘I have a running war with the media. They are among the most dishonest human beings on Earth.’

• ‘We were unbelievably successful in the election with getting the vote of the military. And probably almost everybody in this room voted for me, but I will not ask you to raise your hands if you did. (Laughter.) But I would guarantee a big portion, because we’re all on the same wavelength, folks.’

• ‘We’ve been restrained. We have to get rid of ISIS. Have to get rid of ISIS. We have no choice.’

Wolff has us think that the intelligence community do not fall for such tricks; Trump, here, cares not for the intelligence community, and values it only as a ‘captive audience’, whilst the intelligence community are ‘appalled.’ This is a dangerous myth. It suggests that there is nothing in common between the intelligence community and Trump, and that, because Trump is evil, the intelligence community are not. Trump is against the constitution; the intelligence community are not. Trump acts to undermine American democracy; the intelligence community do not. Trump is an imperialist who will ‘take the oil’; the intelligence community are not.

Despite what Wolff implies, it is rather strange that Trump and the intelligence community are at loggerheads. Trump’s plan for the intelligence community was clear. They were to be his friends; he would provide funding, and so on, and, in exchange, they would torture²¹ in his war against terror, politically support him (as suggested in his speech), in the implementation of his agenda, which includes the calling of those who do not clap for him ‘traitors’. The use of the intelligence community for political ends is not new in the nation of Watergate, COINTELPRO, and Bush-era intelligence community collusion with those who supported claims that Iraq continued to possess weapons of mass destruction, despite ‘disarmament’.

The significance of the clapping is that it suggests what might have been. This was an intelligence community, or at least a subset of the intelligence community, who were willing to support Trump in his mission.

Wolff omits the clapping. This is a failure, either indicating incompetence or bad faith. The first option is that Wolff was unaware of what occurred during Trump’s speech. Perhaps, for example, he was not there, and relied on witness testimony. The question is why he should not then have consulted the publicly available material which even a lowly Librarian writer was able to find. The least charitable conclusion here is that Wolff was so caught up in his own exposés, based on unverifiable anonymous leaks, that he forgot to attempt to verify or disprove the claims he received. At best for Wolff, he relies excessively upon anonymous testimony, and has done too little to compare his claims with those on the public record. This does not bode well for the rest of the book.

The second option is that Wolff was aware of the clapping. It is clearly significant for Wolff’s account that there was loud and enthusiastic clapping and cheering. Perhaps Wolff was aware of some alternative explanation—did Trump bring a large crowd of supporters into the middle of the CIA’s headquarters to clap him? All these (admittedly ridiculous) possibilities would be worth at least the chapter Wolff gave to a verbatim quotation of ramblings which seem perfectly ordinary given the present American political climate. Here, the least charitable interpretation is that Wolff deliberately ignored the clapping because it failed to support his narrative that the intelligence community are patriotic defenders of the Constitution and so on. This is not necessarily true—it is not even particularly probable—but, even so, most charitably, we might say that he has displayed poor judgement.

Nevertheless, despite the flaws of Wolff’s narrative, this is a compelling narrative. At the end of the book, Wolff’s conclusion—that those who once thought ‘[t]his [a Trump presidency] can work’ now ‘could [no] …longer be confident of that premise’ seems true even to the most sceptical—even were a tenth of the events of the book true, the whole affair, by its sheer absurdity, should be enough to cause one to reject the Trump presidency.

Very little in the book is, however, original. The most scandalous revelation—that Bannon thought some meetings with the Russians traitorous—was splashed across a few front pages, and then forgot. The Mueller investigation continues, operating on what is likely a slightly sounder basis than Fire and Fury; liberals continue to do liberal things; conservatives continue to do conservative things; Trump continues to do whatever it is that he enjoys; the book is a product of our times, but does nothing to change them.

Wolff is now a celebrity.²² His celebrity will continue, for a while; he will earn lots of money, and perhaps find himself able to retire, in Trumpian splendour. Trump will find that the rumours about him have been collated in a poorly written book. Perhaps this book will have increased the general utility, in the same way that one might think the same of gossip columns.

Before publication, we know almost everything which was to be inside; in a sense, we knew all its contents, not specifically, but in broad terms, in that we are now accustomed to the ridiculous type of event described in the book. Quite why, therefore, there were so many who desired to read what they already knew, is itself an interesting question. One possibility is that liberals who have seen Trump embrace so many appealing techniques of obfuscation and opportunism now desire their revenge—in the form of a book, which permits the feigning of sophistication literary (‘an important contribution to our national discourse’, says the publisher), and political (see the reaction to Trump’s entirely predictable empty threat of a libel suit).

A comprehensive review of all the events described in the book would be an interesting read; it might also be an uncomfortable read for Wolff, and probably should.²³ Yet it would also be a waste of time. Most of the claims are recycled gossip—perhaps the main function of the book is to remind one of previous rumours.

To read this book having been warned, and to embrace it, therefore, is not only to waste one’s time; it is to give up on standards of accuracy, relevance, and decency, for the short-term hit of reading gossip about people whom one has been socialised to feel superior to. Those who read Fire and Fury, and use it as justification for their anti-Trumpian beliefs deserve the trauma they construct from the limited effect of Trump’s presidency on them; those who have time to decide to be offended by organisational incompetence in the White House clearly are not the victims of his policies on immigration, public health, governmental finance, and so on. Were the President’s policy agenda even neutral, compared to presidencies over the past few decades, the events described in the book would not in any way disqualify him; as this is not the case, the book’s account should be the least of our worries.